I've been wanting to start a thread on ice fishing in this province. It's something I've been doing (or wanting to do) more and more every winter because there are so many opportunities once you drive a couple of hours east from the Fraser Valley and the fisheries are pretty under-utilized.
The past couple of days we went up to Tunkwa Lake for our first outing, just to test out all the gear to make sure they are good to go for the season. The fishing was pretty slow during the day as expected, and a bit windy too which is kind of unusual in the winter. The late afternoon bite however, was quite good. From 2pm until dark, fish steadily showed up on the sounder and by 3:30pm, they were on your bait most of the time. All the fish we kept were in the 16 to 17 inch range, and a handful of 10 to 14 inchers were released.
The rig we used, is basically what Al at the resort always uses, a little jig (in this case, a 1/16oz Rapala Tubby tungsten jig) tipped with some bait (worm, shrimp, dough balls etc) dangled about 12 inches below a broad spoon (I used a Gibbs Ironhead) as a flasher. Al showed me how to use my sounder properly and it was incredible to see how much more effective once you figure out how to read the graph correctly. Most of the fish were caught in 7 to 10ft of water.
More trips to come!
Author
Topic: 2019 BC ice fishing season (Read 14954 times)